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This special limited edition slipcover (designed by Dylan Haley) is limited to 500 units and is only available on our website and at select indie retailers. Absolutely no major retailers will be stocking them.
Since 1978, Icarus Films has been a leading distributor in North America of independent documentary, narrative, and experimental films from around the world and now represents a collection of over 1,000 titles. We value meeting the diverse needs of film lovers, educators, activists, and service providers, as well as challenging audiences, and programmers, with original creative films. Icarus Films is proud to be active in traditional and new media, and to work with new talent as well as old masters.
One of the founders of the epochal film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, and therefore a prime mover of the French New Wave, Doniol-Valcroze joined all the upstart critics making films in the late ‘50s-early 60s with this decadent debut, a cynical drama about upper-class indolence and betrayal. The game-players in question, arriving at a spectacular villa for the reading of a matriarch’s will, include guileless city girl Milena (Françoise Brion), her lawyer ex-boyfriend Miguel (Gérard Barray), and her long-unseen cousins, Fifine (Alexandra Stewart) and Jean-Paul (Jacques Riberolles) – except Jean-Paul is actually Fifine’s boyfriend Robert, passing himself off as a member of the family. The couple maintains an open “arrangement,” and so the gathering becomes a round of duplicity, swapped partners, and heartbreak.
The third couple is the satyric butler (Michel Galabru) and the new chambermaid he hires (Bernadette Lafont), expecting her to be an easy sexual conquest. Doniol-Valcroze conducts this circus with a restrained hand, lending what could’ve been either a tragic art film or a fizzy comedy the tempered air of emotional realism. Less reserved is the house itself, the Chateau d’Aubiry in the south of France, which dominates every frame like an extravagant seventh character, and the boppy soundtrack by Serge Gainsbourg, the title tune of which was his first hit.
directed by: Jacques Doniol-Valcroze starring: Bernadette Lafont, Françoise Brion, Alexandra Stewart, Michel Galabru, Jacques Riberolles, Gérard Barray, Florence Loinod, Paul Guers 1960 / 84 min / 1.33:1 / French DTS-HD MA 2.0
Additional info:
Region A Blu-ray
The Botanical Avatar of Mademoiselle Flora (15 minutes) - Directed by Jeanne Barbillon and starring Bernadette Lafont
An 8-page booklet with an essay by Michael Barrett
English subtitles
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